“Ulrike – letters from the dead wing” is the title of the performance- stage composition presented at Fournos Theatre, Athens. On stage, actress Natalia Georgosopoulou and violinist Fani Vovoni guide the audience through the letters of Ulrike Meinhof, translated into Greek for the first time, offering a journey into the anguished world of Meinhof during her imprisonment (1972–1976).
The performance booklet, featuring Ulrike Meinhof’s letters alongside texts by the creative team, is available at the theatre.
Creative Team / Translation: Fani Vovoni, Natalia Georgosopoulou, Savvas Stroumpos.
Stage Installation / Costumes: Katerina Sotiropoulou.
Creative Team / Translation: Fani Vovoni, Natalia Georgosopoulou, Savvas Stroumpos
Actress: Natalia Georgosopoulou
Musical Dramaturgy / Violin: Fani Vovoni
Stage Installation / Costumes: Katerina Sotiropoulou
Photography: Antonia Kanta
Trailer: Stefanos Kosmidis/ ORKI
Poster design: Georgia Sideri
Communication: Marianna Papaki, Nontas Douzinas
Production: Alas Theatre
“Protest is when I say that I do not like this or that.
Resistance is when I make sure that what I do not like, does not continue.”*
“Ulrike – letters from the dead wing”, is a performance for one actress and one violinist, based on the letters written by Ulrike Meinhof during her imprisonment (1972–1976) until her death. The letters are translated into greek for the first time.
During those years, Meinhof divided her life between the white cell and solitary confinement. Her letters are far more than political documents or personal confessions of someone suffocating under imprisonment. They constitute a danse macabre between words and emotions, between hope and despair, between anger and desolation. The words struggle to preserve something of the humanity of the defiant revolutionary; the thoughts behind them resist the death of the senses, the erosion of memory, and the devastation of the body caused by total isolation.
The breaths that give rise to these words are spasmodic, restless, and fragmented. Meinhof walks a tightrope between reason and madness, between delirium and conscious resistance to confinement. As she undergoes psychological collapse, the sounds and words she commits to paper become her final lifeline. She refuses to be reduced to a human experiment; every cell in her body fights to withstand the corrosive effects of imprisonment. Her body becomes a site of relentless destruction, yet her determination to endure remains the last barricade against annihilation.
This is the world of our performance: an attempt to descend into the deepest recesses of the psyche of a figure at the limits, struggling to survive within a living hell.
Photos from the performance by Antonia Canta
Photos from the rehearsal by Antonia Canta
